We all have been following the rapid growth of cryptocurrency and the creation of lucrative trading platforms.  Cryptocurrency has earned the scrutiny of regulators and criminal prosecutors – not for run-of-the-mill fraud schemes, but for compliance with applicable anti-money laundering laws and regulations. Late in 2020, the Justice Department and the Commodities Futures Trade Commission (“CFTC”) slammed BitMEx and its principals with a coordinated criminal...

2020 FCPA Enforcement and Compliance Trends January 5, 2021, 12 Noon EST Sign Up HERE 2020 OFAC Enforcement and Compliance Trends January 6, 2021, 12 Noon EST Sign Up HERE For FCPA enforcement, 2020 was a record year. The Justice Department collected a record-setting amount of criminal fines for anti-corruption violations, while continuing its aggressive criminal indictment of individuals for FCPA and other criminal offenses....

The United States continues to lag in corporate board diversity.  Many corporate boards are dominated by white males.  Progress on this issue has been slow. The number of women on Russell 3000 boards rose from 15 to 19 percent.  Most of the increase occurred on boards of mid- and large-cap companies.  In 2019, 45 percent of new board members were female and only 15 percent...

The internal controls provision in the FCPA statute has broad application to a variety of situations beyond foreign bribery.  The Securities and Exchange Commission knows full well the power of the internal controls provision and has readily applied it in a variety of circumstances. One recent example is the SEC’s settlement with Andeavor LLC for failure to publicly disclose the status of its negotiations to...

The Trump Administration has focused on competition and the technology sector.  First, the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division filed a monopolization case against Google. Last week, the Federal Trade Commission and 46 states filed a monopolization case against Facebook. These are two major antitrust cases.  When the Biden Administration takes over, it will be interesting to monitor how DOJ and the FTC handle these two cases....

In a far-reaching action, the Health and Human Services – Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG) issued a Special Fraud Alert underscoring the “inherent fraud and abuse risks” associated with company-sponsored speaker programs.  In this Episode, Michael Volkov reviews the HHS-OIG Fraud Alert. The Episode is available Here.

It is always interesting to watch the flow of risk management trends, particularly as they impact ethics and compliance issues.  Financial companies have been the target of regulatory enforcement actions for risk management and control deficiencies.  Citigroup and JP Morgan were two recent targets of banking regulatory enforcement actions.  We will probably see a few more banks subject to regulatory enforcement actions. Apart from the...

The Justice Department is coming to the close of a record FCPA enforcement year despite the disruptions caused by the pandemic. The Vitol case also represents the first parallel prosecution involving the Commodities Futures Trading Commission.  Aside from these points, there are a number of valuable lessons from the case: High-Risk Energy Trading Markets:  Commodity trading markets presents significant corruption risks.  While such trading operations...

Vitol’s bribery scheme stretched into three separate countries – Brazil, Ecuador and Mexico — and was carried out over a ten-year period. The Statement of Facts is instructive in describing the means by which Vitol used false documentation and financial arrangements involving offshore accounts, shell companies and correspondent banking transactions,  Brazil: Confidential Information For a nine-year period, 2005 to 2014, Vitol paid more than $8...

The Justice Department continues to produce FCPA resolutions in a record year for enforcement.  The latest, and perhaps the beginning of several end-of-year and end of the Trump Administration resolutions, is DOJ’s settlement with Vitol, Inc. (Vitol), an energy trading company.  DOJ agreed to a three-year deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) in exchange for a criminal penalty of $135 million.  One-third of the payment, or $45...